[FlareBaffled]

Decided to dust off the old FS2 discs after a veeeery long time away, and I wondered what was what these days.

I am struggling, as I always did, to find a list of what the latest release build actually does by way of features, and I am totally baffled with regard to the current modelling pipeline.

PS2 seems stalled and unfinished, and the Max plugins are seemngly much the same as before.....only I don;t have the current versions of Max to play with.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what I need to mod these days?

1) modelling software options/pipeline
2) essential tools
3) where I can get an actual list of what hte latest FS Open build has by way of options

I would love to have another bash at turning som e of my ideas into pixels....I just don;t know where to re-start!

[Nyctaeus]

1) Blender is the best option. There is a huge tutorial by ShadowWolf, where he descibed step after step how to model, unwrap, texture and convert your model.
2) Notepad, Fred, PCS2, VPView32.
3) SCP Board here, on HLP.

The most useful threads are often stickied to the top of the board, like here in modding section. Enjoy and goodluck with your mods .

[whitearrow]

I'm modelling with blender, but a lot of people use Max. I don't think you need to replace your current software. You will find all you need in the modelling section of the wiki. AFAIK PS2 is keeping on evolving, and there is some people who's working on it, but maybe you'd better have a look to the FS Open Tool section of this forum. Anyway, focus on the wiki because it's huge source for getting started again. 
There are lots of new campaign that are under development right now, and maybe you can ask whether someone needs a model to put into his mod.
You may have a look also here (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/HLP_modellers%27_p3d_pages_directory) to have a closer idea of what's going on in the modelling branch.

sooo... Welcome back! 
How long have you been away?

PS: Betrayal was faster than me..... 

[FlareBaffled]

When I last modded, PCS2 was just a concept, and Truespace 3.2 had been released for free download, and was the essential tool for model assembly. The Max plugins had just been released...but didn't seem to work reliably.

Has been a few years...

But there still hasn;t been another space shooter to match FS2

[whitearrow]

Well, in this case Blender 3d is the most complete free alternative. With PCS2 now you can export fs2 models into .dae format, so you can work on them with 3d modellers. If you've never used blender don't waste time with generic Blender's tutorials on youtube. Go direcly to ShadowWolf's tutorial. Everything you need is there, explained step by step. http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84335.0.

[rhettro]

PCS2 imports the Collada format now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collada So as long as the modeling program exports compatible DAE files, PCS2 should handled them fine. Most users here model with Blender because it is free and powerful.

[mjn.mixael]

TC: "Hey guys, I've been gone since like the beginning of FS modding when tools were just getting started. I'm back, how do I mod, you're tools don't seem to have been upgraded."

Reality: Everything has been upgraded and in some respects continues to be worked on, though sometimes not at the pace that certain individuals prefer. There are gobs and gobs of how to threads on the many aspects of modding.

[Droid803]

The max plugins have been abandoned because there's a collada plugin for 3d studio max, which PCS2 can open, so there's more or less no need for direct max->pof plugins. Thus, nobody ever bothered working on/fixing the old max plugins ever again.
PCS2 is more-or-less finished. It does just about everything I want it to, and quite a bit more, really.

[headdie]

The thing with PCS2 is to watch which build you are downloading, there are some seriously old builds hanging about so you might need to read a few threads in the tools project board to make sure you get a reasonably modern one